203 He Humiliated Me Over Adult Diapers After Carrying His Triplets—Until His Best Friend Exposed His Hidden Past and Secret Life

I stared at the thick parchment on the desk, the room spinning around me for a brief second.

Fifty-one percent.

Three weeks ago, I had been sitting on the floor of a drafty half-finished nursery in Scott’s suburban house, weeping in silence while my newborn babies cried in their bassinets. I had been terrified that my husband would kick me out onto the street with nothing to my name, terrified of the bills, terrified of the sheer physical exhaustion threatening to break my mind.

Now, the lawyer was telling me that I owned the ground Scott stood on.

"That's a lie!" Scott screamed, struggling against the troopers holding his shoulders down. "She's an outsider! She has an associate degree! She was a dental receptionist when I met her! She doesn't know how to run a hedge fund! You're handing a multi-million-dollar empire to a peasant who pees herself!"

Elena stepped forward. Her grief and shock had calcified into something cold, regal, and dangerous. She looked down at Scott with pure disgust.

"A peasant who carried three children with grace while you acted like a rabid dog," Elena said. She pulled her wedding ring from her finger—the five-carat diamond Scott had bought with her own mother’s embezzled money—and dropped it onto Scott’s lap. It rolled off his torn trousers and clinked against the floorboards. "Arthur, issue the emergency board resolution. As the remaining minority shareholder, I vote to confirm Lauren as the managing trustee."

"Elena, please!" Scott begged, the defiance instantly crumbling back into hysterical desperation. "I did it for us! I did it so we wouldn't lose the Hamptons house! I was going to fix the numbers! Don't let them arrest me! If I go to federal prison, I'll die in there!"

"You should have thought about that before you took out an accidental death policy on three infants, Scott," Arthur Miller said, signaling the state troopers. "Take him down to the holding cells. Detective Reynolds is waiting downstairs with the felony warrants for wire fraud, attempted murder for hire, elder abuse, and identity theft."

The officers hauled Scott to his feet. His shattered knee could barely bear weight; he dragged his right leg, groaning in agony as they pulled him toward the door.

As he passed me, he stopped, his bloodshot eyes pleading, frantic, hollow.

"Lauren... please," he whispered, tears streaming down his grimy cheeks. "Tell them it was a misunderstanding. For the kids. They need a father. You can't let them grow up knowing their father is in prison."

I looked at the man who had promised to cherish me in sickness and in health. I looked at the man who had looked at my bleeding, torn, postpartum body and saw only an inconvenience to be mocked and discarded.

"My children don't have a father, Scott," I said quietly, looking directly into his soul. "They only have a donor. And tomorrow morning, I'm filing the paperwork to have your name permanently removed from their birth certificates."

Scott’s jaw dropped. The last shred of his arrogant delusion died behind his eyes.

The troopers dragged him out of the office. His pathetic sobs and the squeak of his dragged shoe echoed down the marble hallway until the heavy fire door slammed shut, cutting off the sound forever.

Silence descended on the room once more.

Margaret Vance walked over to the executive armchair behind the mahogany desk, smoothed her camel-hair coat, and sat down with a quiet sigh of exhaustion.

"Arthur," she murmured. "Get this place cleaned up. I want the locks changed before sunrise, and I want forensic accountants crawling over every file in this building by seven in the morning."

"Already done, Margaret," Miller replied.

Then Margaret looked at Brandon, who was standing by the window, staring out into the glittering skyline of the city.

"Brandon," she said.

Brandon turned around, his expression solemn. "Yes, Mrs. Vance?"

"You kept your mouth shut for six months while Scott was running his games," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. "You only came forward when you realized the ship was sinking and Lauren was holding the life raft. Did you really think I wouldn't notice the twenty-thousand-dollar monthly retainer Scott was paying your consulting firm from the Cayman account?"